The full text is below the fold, but the main idea is contained in these two excerpts:
This is not about lowering the bar in any way – what we’re talking about is confronting the reality that traditional ways of looking at office visits don’t make student behavior better and often times can make it worse.
All of our kids, even our most challenging ones want to do well and we know that is true because when we did make progress with Ramon, Talyse, or anyone else it was not because they went to this magic place called “the office” that changed how they behave, it was because we worked as a team to problem solve what was challenging for them, thought about how to support them in the skills they were lacking, and made expectations and boundaries really clear.
As a teacher, we’ve all had students who were so challenging that we sometimes needed to be sent out of your room to the office. We have that kind of system in place here. But why do we do this? Why do we send kids to the office in the first place? For lots of reasons, right? Maybe it’s because some major incident happened where student safety was at risk. Maybe it’s because a student has been consistently breaking rules and nothing else is working. Maybe it’s because it’s part of a behavior plan in place where we are trying to draw a clear line with what is ok and what is not. Maybe it’s because we’re frustrated and don’t know what else to do (we’ve all been there).
What do we hope results from the action of sending a student to the office? This is a surprisingly complex question and something you might not have thought a ton about. When I stopped and thought about it, it took me a little bit to pin down how to answer it. I think at a most urgent level, it’s to buy time – both for you and the other students by removing a distraction or safety challenge from the classroom so other can learn and also time for the student to “calm down”. We might also hope that this is a time to make a bigger deal out of an action and a place to get families involved so they understand what is going on. And we hope that in some way, there is impact on future behavior – that being sent to the office means that the challenge is less likely to happen again. This might be because an administrator calls mom and she sternly talks to her son for talking back to a teacher. Maybe it’s because the student gets yelled at and he’s really afraid of having to be in trouble again. Or maybe behavior change happens because spending recess in the office makes a child realize that they can’t push another friend in line.
As we’ve worked through our student culture work this summer, the leadership team and I have been thinking about how our beliefs about why students behave (or don’t), impact our answers to why we should send students to the office and what we hope to accomplish when we do that. And just like the idea of “kids behave if they can” has some pretty profound effects on our classroom culture, this idea changes how we’re looking at sending students to the office. Before I dig in too deep, let me be clear that I’m convinced, as is everyone else on the leadership team that our increased focus on “kids do well if they can” will lead to stronger student culture, less misbehavior, and fewer office visits. This is not about lowering the bar in any way – what we’re talking about is confronting the reality that traditional ways of looking at office visits don’t make student behavior better and often times can make it worse. The good news? Everyone here has already had success taking the approach the leadership team is aligned on. Our challenge moving forward is to take this approach from something we do sometimes and turn it into what we do every time and in the process, we can make sending kids out of your classroom way more productive than in the past.
So what does the switch from “kids behave if they want to” to “kids behave if they can” mean for sending students out of a classroom? Well, maybe not that much for the “why” we send a student out – it still really boils down to when a student is really struggling, we have tried all the good strategies we know (including using in room calm down areas and/or partner classrooms when applicable), and the behavior is negatively impacting others so severely that you can’t ignore it. And the other obvious reason is when we are worried about safety of students. So far, not much change.
What does change is what outcome we are hoping for when the student goes to the office. In the past, we may have thought of the office as a deterrent – I know I did. If we were consistent enough and made the office a big enough deal, then kids would learn that they really, really wanted to avoid having to come to the office. So they would stop making bad choices. But we can all picture our hardest kids who get sent to the office most and rarely did that line of thinking really work. For Tariq, Talyse, Ramon, Rosa, Earl, or any other “heavy hitter” you can think of, they could come to the office, have a severe consequence and make the same mistake 5 minutes later. They hated coming to the office and clearly knew what would make them have to go there, but day after day they would get in trouble and be sitting in the blue chair by my door. At times, their fear of getting in trouble and coming to the office caused their reactions to be even more extreme, making our challenges even greater.
And this makes sense when we think about “kids do well if they can” not because they don’t want to. All of our kids, even our most challenging ones want to do well and we know that is true because when we did make progress with Ramon, Talyse, or anyone else it was not because they went to this magic place called “the office” that changed how they behave, it was because we worked as a team to problem solve what was challenging for them, thought about how to support them in the skills they were lacking, and made expectations and boundaries really clear. When we have done this well, it doesn’t mean that challenging students don’t come to the office, it means that the focus was on solving problems with students, reflecting on how they are using skills/strategies, and making a plan to make things right and following through. In other words, we were doing a version of “Plan B” from Lost at School without knowing that term. Now we’re going to take this approach that we’ve used successfully, if infrequently in the past and bring it front and center.
What is the purpose of an office visit as we move forward? If kids behave if they can, then office visits are a time for students to regain self-control and/or repair harm. But…what does that actually mean? Regain self-control is essentially another name for a calm down or de-escalation so that the child can be safe and an adult can have a problem solving conversation with her. This may look like helping a student use a strategy to stop having a tantrum or just giving them a few minutes of silent time on their own. Repair harm is where students take steps to make right what they have done wrong. It could be writing an apology letter. It could be missing part of recess tomorrow because they hurt a friend today. It could be sharing their snack with the friend who they stole from. And it could also include calling home, a color change in their behavior report, or in the most severe cases, even a suspension (which we use very rarely BTW, with only 4 all of last year).
But the key is that everything is grounded not in the language of punishment/deterrence, but in problem solving. In almost all cases, a student who goes to the office is having a Plan B problem solving conversation in the near future. Why? Because if the student’s behavior is so challenging that they were sent out of class we need to work with them to put a plan/approach in place or to revisit/revise a previous one. “So it sounds like you made a really unsafe choice on the bus because someone was sitting in your seat…I’m wondering what we can do to make sure this doesn’t happen again” or “We talked the other day, about some strategies you could use when you’re getting frustrated with a friend. It doesn’t sound like that happened today, right? Do you think we should try something different or do you want try this plan tomorrow” These conversations could happen with whoever is in the office, the homeroom teacher when the student returns to class, or even with the homeroom teacher later in the day. The key is that when a student is sent to the office we’re all on the same page that the visit is not what is solving the problem. What actually matters is the conversation and problem solving that takes place.
If this is our goal, what are the logistics and systems that need to be in place to make it happen? Well, we might need a variety of spaces, tools, and materials to meet the different needs of students. We’re also going to need people who are good at this and have time to focus on this work. We’re also going to need really strong communication and follow through so teachers, families, and kids feel supported. And it needs to be as streamlined for teachers as possible since you all have so much to do each day. What does this look like?
• We don’t actually use the main office as the space we send kids who are struggling. There is too much going on and not enough space to enable the variety of conversations and harm repairing actions that need to take place. Instead, we will use an empty classroom for this purpose and we will simply use the number of the room as its name. Room 112 is set up with a variety of seating areas and materials to meet the needs of students, including writing materials for apology notes, Play-dough for students who need to regain self-control, books for silent reading, etc.
• This room is home base for Adrian (our behavior support staff member) and whatever leadership team member is on student culture duty at that time. Leadership team staff will rotate this duty throughout the day so there are times of the day when leadership team members are only focused on student culture and other times when they can focus totally on observations or teacher coaching.
• If teachers need a student to go to Room 112 they will first try to escort the student there if possible since this continues the theme of problem solving, not deterrence/punishment. This is obviously harder in certain grades, times of the day, or students so if you need support in your classroom you will text Adrian and the Room 112 cell phone which will be carried by whichever leadership team member is on duty. This makes it very clear for teachers and support staff who is responding to a student and ensures that the follow through and support are happening with 99.9% consistency. With so many moving parts in such an important structure, we need to make sure that no balls are dropped.
• When a student comes to Room 112, what happens next will look very different but the consistency is that the goal is for the student to regain self-control and to repair whatever harm they have caused. Most often, a problem solving conversation will be part of this process. Just like teachers don’t yell at children in classrooms, we won’t yell in Room 112.
• When a student is ready to go back to class, Adrian or the leadership team member will complete a quick summary sheet (was parent called? What already happened to repair harm? What further steps need to happen later? Does the classroom teacher need to have a Plan B conversation with the student?) and walk the student back to class. Records of summary sheets and logs of which students are sent to Room 112 will be kept as information for intervention meetings and for families.
We're just a few weeks into school so it's still early, but so far this approach seems to be working really well for kids and teachers. I'll continue to blog about our approach throughout the year.
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